men to whom, in phrases as halting as though they struggled to define
an ultimate idea, he was expounding the cursed nuisance of living in
a hole with such a damned climate that one had to get out of it by
February, with the contingent difficulty of there being no place to take
one's yacht to in winter but that other played-out hole, the Riviera.
From the outskirts of this group Glennard wandered to another, where
a voice as different as possible from Hollingsworth's colorless organ
dominated another circle of languid listeners.

"Come and hear Dinslow talk about his patent: admission free," one of
the men sang out in a tone of mock resignation.

Dinslow turned to Glennard the confident pugnacity of his smile. "Give
it another six months and it'll be talking about itself," he declared.
"It's pretty nearly articulate now."

"Can it say papa?" someone else inquired.

Dinslow's smile broadened. "You'll be deuced glad to say papa to IT
a year from now," he retorted. "It'll be able to support even you in
affluence. Look here, now, just let me explain to you--"

Glennard moved away impatiently. The men at the club--all but those who
were "in it"--were proverbially "tired" of Dinslow's patent, and none
more so than Glennard, whose knowledge of its merits made it loom large
in the depressing catalogue of lost opportunities. The relations between
the two men had always been friendly, and Dinslow's urgent offers to
"take him in on the ground floor" had of late intensified Glennard's
sense of his own inability to meet good luck half way. Some of the men
who had paused to listen were already in evening clothes, others on
their way home to dress; and Glennard, with an accustomed twinge of
humiliation, said to himself that if he lingered among them it was in
the miserable hope that one of the number might ask him to dine. Miss
Trent had told him that she was to go to the opera that evening with her
rich aunt; and if he should have the luck to pick up a dinner-invitation
he might join her there without extra outlay.

He moved about the room, lingering here and there in a tentative
affectation of interest; but though the men greeted him pleasantly no
one asked him to dine. Doubtless they were all engaged, these men who
could afford to pay for their dinners, who did not have to hunt for
invitations as a beggar rummages for a crust in an ash-barrel! But
no--as Hollingsworth left the lessening circle about the table an
admiring you